Images can play a vital role in how effectively messages can reach various audiences. When images accompany text or a story, which element makes the difference in engaging the reader or viewer? Which motivates one to act? Using images strategically in external and internal communications planning and execution can be a vital component of success for an organization.

Stunning photos today of the millions of Egyptians out in the streets to commemorate the start of the revolution a year ago that turned out Mubarak — and to demand transition from military to civilian rule.

A few things have been written on the supporting role of design in the revolution and the urban landscape as both site and medium of protest:

But I think my favorite detail is in this annotated overview of Tahrir square by BBC News.

The authors of direct action (particularly in West Asia and North Africa) are often depicted as a rowdy mob of thugs. But instead of the usual sea of angry Arab men so often shown by the mainstream media, the photo shows a kindergarten set up in the square. Schools in Cairo had been closed during the protests, but many mothers wanted to attend the demonstration as well. So demonstrators organized an impromptu kindergarten.

The image captures the spirit of mutual support that sprang up around the occupation. And my favorite detail: the newsprint under the paintings to keep the square, the city and country they love, free from spills. No random acts of violence here, but using the city to create something new, a different future, with hope and love.

We are the 99 percent. I've been thinking about poster designs and what imagery I can contribute to #occupywallstreet, but these hundreds of self-portraits of people telling their own stories of debt, sickness, unemployment, and eviction are far more powerful than anything I've come up with.

In Rwanda in 1994 covering a notoriously lethal civil war, photojournalist Seamus Conlan found himself suddenly and unexpectedly reassigned, not by a magazine or newspaper editor, but by his conscience. “I was working in Rwanda as a freelance photographer doing documentation on the lost children, a very big problem and a huge story,” says Conlan. “As I was riding in the back of a truck, photographing the orphans and collecting them at the same time, I decided to take a photo of every child as a means of tracing them.”

Conlan dropped out of photojournalism to complete his self-assigned new mission, photographing 21,000 orphans over a period of a year and a half. But because the children were known by ambiguous names such as Child of Hope or No Man Should Dishonor Me — “There were no John Smiths” — Conlan completed his tracing solution by posting the photographs on billboards sorted by place of origin. “If a child came from Kigali, the parents would go to that billboard, point to the child, give the ID number to the Red Cross and take that child home.”

Conlan’s photographic tracking method is now used by all major relief agencies.

At about the time I was teaching these young students, I was collaborating with a comic artist, Paul O’Connell, on an article for Ctrl.Alt.Shift. Our partnership revolved around the idea of us combining our various skills to create new ways of delivering messages. What this meant is that Paul took my photographs from places like the Congo and transformed them into a comic strip to tell the story to a different audience.” (via)

Pentagon to Allow Photos of Soldiers' Coffins. “The military said the ban protected the privacy and dignity of families of the dead. But others, including some of the families as well as opponents of the Iraq war, said it sanitized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was intended to control public anger over the conflicts.... The original 1991 ban had its genesis in an embarrassment for the first President Bush. In 1989, the television networks showed split-screen images of Mr. Bush sparring and joking with reporters on one side and a military honor guard unloading coffins from a military action that he had ordered in Panama on the other.”